Category Archives: Raiding

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We usually don’t bother posting about normal (err… Heroic!) boss kills on the front page. But this one felt a little different. After a few nights of hard work, we got this very technical boss down. It was a very fun exciting kill, and ended up ranking pretty high for us (Top 200 US). It felt like a mythic boss by the time we got it done.

We had some time to spare to see what mythic had in store, and I must say, I am very excited about this instance. The fights seem fun, original, and very challenging. Can’t wait to see how we do!

With all the excitement over BRF, I nearly forgot to post that we downed Ko’ragh and managed to have that one behind us before we had all these new bosses to think about. We are progressing well in BRF at 9/10H, and now that Mythics are available hope to have a mythic kill behind us very soon!

I want to complain about Blizzard scheduling progression during the holidays, but I can’t say it really tripped us up too bad.

We downed Mythic Brackenspore on the first night after a two week break from progression. Seems we got our cake, and got to eat it too. Now that the holidays are behind us and we can raid our full schedule again I expect the boss kills to come fast and furious! Tectus is on notice!

And so it is official, TRG has it’s first ever mythic kill under it’s belt and has graduated to 1/7M Highmaul.

I wasn’t expecting to kill this tonight. We had struggled a little more than I wanted on Heroic Imperator, and didn’t think Kargath would take less than an hour of attempts. I found this fight to be very fun, a little chaotic, but ultimately not very challenging. I will say our team absolutely clicked on the last couple attempts and we dropped him with no problem.

While I am proud of our performance on this boss, I’d be lying if I said that it was the takeaway here. This kill is significant… perhaps the most significant in TRGs long history. It is significant because it means WE DID IT.

I will never forget sitting in the audience at 2013 Blizzcon and hearing Blizzard announce the changes to raiding in the upcoming expansion. “The hardest tier of raiding in Warlords will be called Mythic, and it is only available in 20-man raid size.”

As the GM of a successful 10-man heroic raid team, my heart dropped.

20-man only?! Could that be right? What does it mean for TRG? For me? The whirlwind of thought that were flying through my head that weekend was crazy. I loved our 10-man guild, I loved 10-man heroic raiding. What were we to do? I knew if we wanted to remain relevant we would have to raid mythic, which meant we would have to DOUBLE our roster size. And it wasn’t about just getting 10 more warm bodies, they had to be good, we had to be able to compete, and they had to fit into our tight-knit family that we already had established. Could we do it? Should we even try?

It was overwhelming.

After the shock wore off, and after a lot of soul searching and discussion with our team, it became clear. We had to do it. It was time to get to work.

While most guilds got to relax the last year of SoO and enjoy having all content dead, the work had just started for us. We started recruiting, and trialing new members, rejecting many and keeping a few. Slowly our 10-man roster grew to a 12-man, then 15. Long established raiders sat on the bench for weeks. For the first time ever we raided almost our full schedule outside of progression.

But we did it, we got our roster north of 20. Hit a few speed bumps at the last minute, made another huge push, then raided like crazy the last 2 weeks… and here we are. WoD’s first mythic boss is dead at the hands of TRG.

Totally Rad Guild is now officially a 20-man Mythic raiding guild. I’d be lying if I said it was going to be downhill from here. T17 still has all the potential to be our most challenging yet… but I am completely confident that the group of guys calling themselves the TRG core raiders are up to the task. We are in the game now.

Thanks everyone (new, old, and retired) who worked so hard over the last year to make this completely insignificant boss, one of the most significant in our guilds history. Looking forward to the next boss!

Well here we are at the end of another expansion. Before I spend too much time talking about what a ride MoP has been for us, I will speak about this boss in particular: holy crap. If 5 weeks ago (before our first Garrosh pull) you asked me what bosses have challenged this guild the most I would have thrown out names like Heroic Lich King, Heroic Rag, and more recently Lei Shen and Siegecrafter Blackfuse. Well, I think this one trumped them all. Beyond pull count alone this bosses really stretch our ability to execute perfect for 12 minutes. While you couldn’t tell by watching the video, we had to analyze every second of this fight. We had to try a million different things for every mechanic, control our damage, play perfectly as individuals, and wipe a lot. Despite lots of hard raids of disconnections, people on vacation, and just plan doing it wrong… we got this boss down. I couldn’t be more proud of the way this group preserved through wipe after wipe until we had this boss so dialed in there was no option left but success. Overall we finished this expansion with a US 89 Kill, and were the second 10-man guild on Sargeras to get it done.

Which brings me to my next rant. This expansion has been the best ever for TRG. It seems like a lifetime ago when we were making the first pulls on Heroic Stoneguard back on Executus (it was really only about 16 months ago). At that point I was just trying to figure out how to hold the guild together on a dying server. After everyone rallying to keep the guild alive, we made the BIG JUMP to one of the top Alliance servers. I knew it would be hard going from being a big fish in a very small pond to swimming with the big boys. My biggest grandest hope was to be on the front page of Sargeras WoWProgress page. I never could have dreamed we would be near the top! I can only thank our vets for taking the leap and the AWESOME new recruits that were waiting for us here. They are now a core part of TRG, and TRG is better than it has ever been.

Looking forward to Warlords Of Draenor there is a lot of uncertainty. We now have to double our roster size, and prepare ourselves for 20-man mythic raiding. While the prospect is certainly intimidating, I am certain we will do it well. If we handle this transition half as well as we handled what is in our rearview mirrors, I know we will be tremendously successful. We have a lot going for us. We have some of the most skilled players I have ever had the pleasure of raiding with, and the leadership to get it done (we have done that whole 25-man thing before afterall). I’m excited to see what the future holds, and will always look back fondly at Mists of Pandaria.

If you have what it takes and want to try and join us for the WoD adventure, get in touch! We are recruiting EVERYTHING. Until then we will be taking it easy enjoying the fruits of an incredibly successful expansion. See you all in Warlords Of Draenor!

This boss challenged us like few before have. It was an amazingly well designed fight that pushed our ability to strategize, execute, adapt, control, and pump out raw numbers. I’m really proud of the way everyone came together and stuck through the little over 200 wipes it took to get this guy down.

We had to try every combination of positioning and comp imaginable, went back to the drawing board on strat somewhere in the wipe 120 range, before deciding we had it right the first time. I’m just glad we found something that worked, and were able to perform well enough to get it down.

Overall it was a US 78 kill that brought us up to #3 10-man on the server. We certainly have momentum on our sides, and it feels great to see our name moving up that WoWProgress server list. We can’t wait to see what the Paragons have in store for us!